Weekly Update #82

Happy (rainy) Saturday. Seems like the summer is starting to wind down now. Temperatures are only in the mid to high 70s now and today we’re getting some showers. You can definitely feel the seasons changing!

Didn’t hear back from any agents this week. At this point I’ve exhausted the initial list of agents I have, so I’ll either have to start reaching to people who didn’t match my search criteria or just hope I hear back from the others. I’ve already put in quite a decent amount of work on this already, so I’m thinking I’ll just hang tight and learn some lessons so that next time I’ll be more prepared to create a more enticing offer. I’m surprised by how tight the market is for genres and voices and given that most people are only going to read the first five pages, it makes sense for it to really start off with a bang. Next time I’m going to focus on that as a first step to improving my book’s marketability.

My writing went pretty ok-ish this week. Some days were good and some were just whatever. Current word count is 72k. It definitely feels like I’m approaching events that are climax-adjacent, so to speak. Given how much I have thought about the ending, I expect it will take up quite a significant portion of the rest of the word count (assuming it’s about as long as the first book), so it’s time to get moving.

I expect I’ll be at or near the end of this draft around the end of September. At that time if I haven’t heard from any agents then I’m going to publish the first book. Just letting you agents know!

SB